


Physical Theology

by apollos



Series: all the times in-between [6]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: But not in the sexy way, Coda, Flashbacks, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Injuries, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Rough Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Voyeurism, but nothing unusual for the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Mac, Dennis, and the bunker, eight years apart. Flashback and coda for 7x06, "The Storm of the Century."





	Physical Theology

_8 Years Earlier_

Dennis has been chatting some pretty young thing up at the bar all night. Her ID says twenty-two, but Dennis thinks she's probably closer to nineteen. Definitely a college student, talking about her classes (Dennis catches _calc _and _orgo_) with the boy who brought her here at the bar. Dennis watched as the kid became less and less interested in her, as he drifted off to join his buddies and left her alone. She's not that pretty, is the thing, her nose is off-center and her hair's a weird color, and her conversational skills aren't that great. But so rarely do they get coeds at this bar that Dennis figures he can grab the opportunity. He makes her rum and cokes and winks and lingers, and when the kid leaves, he swoops in.

"I think I'm going to close my tab," the girl says. The kid wasn't even paying for her. "I'm going to go home."

"Do you want me to call you a cab?" Dennis rests his arm on the bar, leans in. He feels eyes on the back of his neck and his spine rankles like a cat's, knowing who's looking at him looking at her.

"No, it's fine. I'll walk." The girl smiles one of those ingenuous if-I-smile-this-conversation-will-end-fastersmiles.

"Oh, that sounds dangerous." Dennis drops his voice. "A woman walking alone in South Philly at—" he makes a show of checking his watch—"twelve-twenty in the morning on a Saturday? I just couldn't live with that on my conscious."

"Oh, ha, well, um…Are you guys closing soon?" she asks. She brings one of her legs in from outside the bar and Dennis fights the urge to smile, a _genuine _smile, because that means she's taken his bait, pointing her body towards him, giving him her attention.

Dennis taps his chin. The party that has rejected her and a few of their regulars, grumpy old men in open flannels and jeans who slam back cheap beer after cheap beer, are the only customers left in the bar. Instead of answering her question he says, "Just what did that guy think when he brought a classy lady like yourself to this joint?"

She laughs, flips her hair over her shoulder. "I'm not classy."

"Classier than this place." Dennis lowers his voice. "Maybe I will call you that cab."

"No!" She reels back and giggles a little when she sees herself, and Dennis has the fish on the line, the reel and rod working in his hands.

Fifteen minutes later she's ready. Dennis nods at Dee, who rolls her eyes but walks away from her conversation with Charlie and behind the bar, a look of pure bitchiness on her face as she grabs a rag and swipes through some glasses. Dennis takes the coed's hand and makes a show of holding it over the bar counter. She looks behind her shoulder, at the guy who brought her here; he sneers. Dennis thinks, _happy to help_.

One last thing to do: when Dennis walks by Mac, sitting on the opposite end of the bar and frowning around the rim of a beer bottle, he pats his thigh with his free hand. Up close, nearly at the juncture, a slight squeeze. Mac shifts and breathes, not quite a sigh, not quite a normal exhalation.

Dennis gets the girl into the bunker, kisses her up against the wall and whispers things in her ear all the while calculating how much he's made tonight and which cab company he should tell her to call afterwards if the guy doesn't try and take her back. She's grabbing at the front of his shirt, at the back of his head, hitching one of her legs up on his, and Dennis hears her little moans and the wet smack of their lips but more than that Dennis hears the signature creaking pattern and the slight gush of air as the door opens. The atmosphere in the room shifts ever so slightly as Mac steps inside, navigating himself to his usual corner, and against the coed's mouth Dennis smiles, deep and honest, wrapping his hands under her thighs and hoisting her up.

_Present Day_

The ocular pat-down of the situation at the supply store informs Mac that shit is about to hit the fan. Dennis and Charlie aren't paying attention to him, too concerned with whatever dumb scheme Dennis concocted to pick up chicks and ignoring the fact that they run a _bar_, there's boxes of fruits and nuts and water and alcohol in the back already. Mac grabs one of the fancy new TVs and loads a cart with indiscriminate junk food, sidestepping the frantic people and slotting himself in line. Feeling smug, he hands over one of the company credit cards, punches in the pin (1234) and pushes his purchase into the incongruous sunny day. He calls a cab, loads his purchases and heads back to the bar.

"Yeah, we got a pretty sweet bunker," Mac tells the cab driver, eating a bag of pork rinds as he talks. The slimy smell filters into the air, and Mac tells the guy to buy his own when he asks if he can have some. "Anyway, we survived Y2K in that thing. I built it, you know. I designed it. Me and Dennis built it together. That's why it actually works, 'cause we didn't let Dee or Charlie in on it."

"I do not know these people," the cab driver says. "I do not care. If you aren't going to give me a pork rind, I do not want to talk to you."

"Wow, _rude_."

Mac underpays the guy when he gets to the bar and darts inside. What's he going to do, drag Mac back in the cab? Send a collector for the missing couple of dollars? Mac laughs. That guy better hope that he can turn his cab into an aquatic vehicle, like Dennis's Range Rover, given the flood about to occur.

Thinking of that Mac takes a moment to pray, lest a flood truly wipe out the earth. Mac's Ark. He would save himself, Dennis, Charlie and Frank; he'd try to leave Dee behind but she'd squawk her way in, somehow. He thinks about Jack Bauer the cat, about Poppins. He envisions sweeping them all up in his arms and putting them in the bunker, safe and sound, ready to forge a new world underneath Mac's wings. It's a nice image. Mac smiles.

It takes a couple of hours of watching the new TV and eating chips, but he finally hears the faint sounds of clamoring in the bar above. He takes the glasses off, brushes his chest off and stands up, ready to rub his escape into everybody's faces. _Suckers_, he thinks. _Idiots_. He's about to exit the bunker when the door swings open and reveals Dennis. Mac thinks, _I'll start with him, _but then he sees what state Dennis is in: jaw clenched, red with rage, sputtering. Mac's heart drops like a cable car with the cable cut, crashing somewhere in his stomach.

"Bro?" Mac says. He peers behind Dennis; none of the rest of the gang has descended. Mac swallows and edges around Dennis's body to shut the door.

"Goddammit!" Dennis screams. He whips his head around as he looks at the bunker, veins in his neck so prominent Mac thinks he can see them pulsating. "What is all this shit, Mac? Junk food and a 3D-TV? You thought we could _afford _this?"

"Well, yeah, with Frank—"

"Fuck Frank!" Dennis grabs one of Mac's bags of chips and squeezes it. The sound of potato chips snapping fills the air, sickening Mac to his stomach. It sounds organic, it sounds like Dennis is breaking bones. Dennis throws the bag down and stomps on it.

"It's not like I was going to eatthose, or anything," Mac tests. He takes a few steps closer to Dennis. The television continues to blare, the weatherwoman talking on and on, and then the sound is gone, because Dennis has thrown his fist into the center. "Dude!" Mac shrieks. "We could have just returned it!"

"Fuck _that_," Dennis heaves. "_Fuck _her."

"What happened?" Mac asks, finally. _Her._

The television sparks and there's blood on the floor now, dripping from Dennis's hand as he pulls it back towards his chest. Mac goes to a cabinet and pulls out the first aid kit, his hands shaking as struggles to open it, finally breaking the flimsy plastic hatch. He pulls out cleansing wipes and gauze, displaying them in his held-out hands as he approaches Dennis, making his intentions as clear as he can.

Mac rests the supplies on the arm of the lounge chair and takes Dennis's bleeding hand in his own. He steps them out of range of the shattered screen, still sending a few weak sparks out now and then. Electric buzzing swells in the air. Barely any light to see by, Mac works mostly on feel. "I still have it, right, Mac?" Dennis asks. His eyes glaze over as Mac pulls little shards of glass from Dennis's hands, throwing them over his shoulder. "I'm still sexy? I'm still powerful? Women still want me?"

"Totally," Mac says. With all the glass out of Dennis's thin, smooth skin, he takes a wipe and starts to disinfect the cuts. He thinks of how many times he has done this, and Dennis for him, and the process of breaking just to mend again.

"Then why did she reject me?" Dennis is thinking out loud and Mac knows better than to answer the question, just keeps mopping up Dennis's blood, turning the smooth rock of his hand over and over until all the red is gone except for the tiny splits in the surface. Nothing more than little paper cuts. Not a thing. "It's her fault. She must be crazy. Fucking crazy to reject _me_, Dennis Reynolds. I would have been the best thing to ever have happened to her. I would have elevated her from her miserable existence, whoring herself out on the weather channel for mere pennies. I _am _the best thing, ever, to have happened. I am a God. I am God."

"I don't know why anychick would ever reject you," Mac mumbles. He hopes these are the right words. He keeps his eyes on Dennis's as he picks up the gauze, then drops them so he can focus on wrapping Dennis's wounds. His knuckles were bruised with the impact, but most of the cuts line the back of his hand, the taut mountain range of skin where his thumb melds into his wrist. Mac bandages Dennis's hand like he's broken it, not just cut it and bruised it, and when he's done he takes a calculated risk.

He brings Dennis's hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles.

Mac watches Dennis's eyes as they slide around in the sockets, watches as they change colors like peering through a kaleidoscope, like laying back and getting high and waiting. They cloud up, they relax. Irises and all the other little parts Mac can't name floating around. White streaked with red, popped veins, the sting. Mac keeps his mouth on Dennis's knuckles. Dennis's hand, limp between them.

"I need something from you," Dennis says.

_Anything_, Mac thinks_. I have given you all and I will give you more_. In real life he eases Dennis's hand back into his own personal space and perks up. "Sure."

"Let me fuck you."

A beat, and then Dennis repeats: "_Me. _Fuck. _You._"

The cable car has been fixed and Mac's heart soars through his body, about to exit from his mouth. What an end that would be, puking blood and his heart out all over Dennis and dying at his feet. Dennis would love that.

The _sure _was consent enough. Mac doesn't want to talk. Mac isn't afraid of Dennis, really. Dennis hurts Mac, Mac cannot deny it. Dennis canonizes Mac, stabs him with arrows, arrows in many different forms with many different points, turns Mac into Saint Sebastian. Mac takes that; Mac knows how it works, the boundaries they have drawn on each other's maps; Mac closes the space between them and lets Dennis touch him. Mac isn't afraid _of _Dennis, he's afraid _for _Dennis, he's afraid what will happen if he stops closing that space, if he stops dressing Dennis's wounds, if he stops kissing Dennis's knuckles, if he stops trying to say the right words at the right time, if he stops presenting his body as raw clay to be formed by Dennis's hands. Mac says nothing, and Mac lets Dennis touch him.

Dennis grabs at the back of Mac's shirt with sharp-clawed hands, pulling him into his own body. Things don't slide together quite right, in the way they're used to, and Mac thinks, _it is me that's changed_, and Mac thinks, _we'll just have to figure it out. _Dennis latches his mouth onto Mac's neck like a vampire, sucks and bites and scratches at Mac's back.

As pliant as a skinny tree bending to hurricane force winds. Dennis manhandles Mac until Mac's face-up against a wall, Dennis licking the back of Mac's head just underneath his hairline, sinking his teeth into the narrow and sensitive skin there. Mac closes his eyes and presses his palms against the cold metal shell of the bunker. Dennis's breath on the back of his neck, the bite of his incisors, and Dennis pressing his cattail body over Mac's not to shelter but to affirm. Prove something Mac already knows. Dennis tugs Mac's pants down, then stops, rests his forehead in one of the many nooks in Mac's body made for Dennis to do just that.

"Den?" Mac ventures.

Dennis huffs against Mac's neck and then pulls himself back up. "You like this?"

"_Fuck_ yeah."

Whether or not he likes it is not the important part right now. Mac likes _this_, this moment here, as Dennis presses one of Mac's hands to the wall with his injured hand, not holding it but applying pressure, and sticks the fingers of his other hand in Mac's mouth for Mac to wet with his own spit. Mac likes sucking Dennis's fingers down to the very edge. Mac likes this well enough for now, but Mac wouldn't like for this to be all, or to be the last, but then again what Mac likes isn't the important part, here or in life. It's God's will and Dennis's will, and the important part is that Mac submits and does good by them.

His pants pulled down and Dennis preps Mac quickly and sloppily, not opening Mac enough to make it not hurt. Dennis likes it when it hurts, Mac knows that, but Dennis likes it better when it doesn't, but Dennis lies to himself and for that matter so does Mac, so Mac grinds his teeth and lurches forward with the impact when Dennis enters him. Dennis's cock pierces through Mac like one of the arrows through Mac's stomach. _Father_, Mac thinks, _father, am I not a martyr? Do I not throw myself on the stone? Do I nut suffer enough? _Dennis pushes himself until he's all the way in, until every crevice of Mac's spine fits into every dip of Dennis's abdomen and chest, flattened against the wall.

If this is what Dennis must do, then Mac will be the one done unto. Slack-jawed against the wall Mac starts to pant, to lurch his hips in time with Dennis's frantic thrusts. His fingernails scramble against the sheet metal. One of Dennis's arms holds Mac tight around the stomach, reaching across the farther distance, and the other grips Mac's face, the tips indenting into Mac's flesh. Later Mac will say, _he scratched me_, and everybody will shrug and not care. Later Mac will trace the lines in his face in the mirror in the bar's bathroom and say all sorts of things to convince himself. In this moment he groans and reaches behind himself, trying to get a purchase. He finds the fabric of Dennis's shirt, clings. With his other hand he reaches down to fist his cock.

"Yes," Dennis acquiesces, letting the word open-mouthed against Mac's ear, his voice everywhere and nowhere all at once. "See, baby? I've still got it. I know how to fuck, and fuck _good_."

Mac couldn't speak even if he wanted to, even if he thought that was what he had to do. Instead he keeps that fistful of Dennis's shirt in his hand and grounds himself and jerks himself off, so hot with a wall so cool, goosebumps rising on his skin as sweat drips down it. Dennis keeps the unrelenting, undulating pace of his thrusts, his hips jerking. All Mac can hear is the wet noises of their bodies working together, their pants and their groans, and faintly, the hum of the broken television. It's dark in the bunker, but Mac keeps his eyes closed, anyway.

A deep snap of teeth into the skin below Mac's ear lets Mac knows when Dennis comes, followed by a guttural, primal scream, one that will surely drift through the rafters. Dennis doesn't pull out but lets his body go slack against the wall, melting on top of Mac's. Mac needs to come, too, but instinct takes over. He guides Dennis out and swivels his body around to grasp at Dennis, to prevent him from falling.

The body in his hand feels not like the one that just fucked him, or the one that came into the bunker in that awful fit. Dennis feels light and loose and shaky. Mac cradles him, forehead pressed tight into his shoulder. Glass cracks underfoot. It sounds like lightning. Mac fights the fire in his belly.

"I could make you come if I wanted." Dennis's voice floats from—somewhere. Mac is counting back from ten in his head, over and over again. "But I don't want to."

"That's okay," Mac mutters. Fistfuls of Dennis's shirt in both hands, right over his shoulder blades. When they crucified Jesus Christ they stuck a knife in his side; when they crucified Jesus Christ he died. When they crucified Jesus Christ he died from his body stretching to breaking, he died from choking on his own flesh.

Mac throws himself on the stone, Mac carries the cross, Mac lets go of Dennis and watches him walk up while he says to Mac, "I'll send Charlie down to clean up" and Mac buttons his pants and breathes and stares at the crumbs of glass, the beads of blood, the dirt of sin, all over the floor.


End file.
